Revenues and operating income increase, but Motorola posts operating loss of $248 million
Google has just announced its Q3 2013 earnings, and it's another solid quarter for the search giant. We're listening in on the earnings call as we speak, but here's your breakdown of the financials:
$14.89 billion in revenues, up 12 percent year-over-year
Operating income of $3.44 billion, 23 percent of revenues, up from 2.74 billion last year
Net income of $2.97 billion, up from 2.18 billion last year
Earnings Per Share of $8.75, up from $6.53 last year
Google-owned sites made up $9.39 billion, or 68 percent, of total Google revenues, with Google Network bringing in $3.15 billion and "other" a total of $1.23 billion. 56 percent of Google revenues came from countries other than the U.S., which is just slightly higher than Q3 2012.
A big hit on the Internet in China right now is a professionally produced cartoon called How to Make Leaders, which satirizes the American and U.K. election systems and shows how China's six most important leaders rose from grassroots politics to the apogee of power in the country.
It's a cartoon that is extremely rare in China, as even gentle satire is not tolerated, but its positive spin on the process of appointing China's leaders has prompted some commentators to suspect it may be a clever piece of propaganda in disguise.
The high production values, combined with the release in Chinese and English with subtitles, suggests that the Propaganda Ministry may be getting wise to disruptive marketing and more sophisticated on-message content.
The five-minute cartoon compares the systems of the U.S. and Britain, saying that you can rise to power either by "a single vote that gets the whole nation out to vote" or alternatively endure "a meritocratic screening that requires years of hard work like the tempering of a kung fu master."
The process of appointing leaders in China is an arcane, secretive process that takes place behind closed doors before the outcome is revealed at one of a number of Communist Party congresses.
The cartoon's message is that the system is actually extremely representative.
"As long as the people are satisfied, and the country progresses and develops as a result, it’s working," is the conclusion.
The cartoon shows how current President Xi Jinping took more than 40 years to get to the top, passing through various community-level offices before jumping up the ladder of provinces and finally to the top office, in a scene like a video game.
"He has comprehensively understood the actual conditions of the country before being elected as the president," according to Chinese state media reports about the video, which again feeds into the theory that it might be a propaganda piece.
The video also features other top current political leaders, as well as late chairman and founding father of the Communist revolution in 1949, Mao Zedong, the architect of reform Deng Xiaoping and former presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao also appear in the video.
In an amusing tableau, the cartoon shows President Barack Obama donning boxing gloves to fight his way to the top, gathering large amounts of funding en route, and concludes that becoming president in the U.S. is harder than winning American Idol.
Intriguingly, the cartoon comes out just days after the Xinhua news agency carried a commentary calling for a "de-Americanized" world.
Meanwhile British Prime Minister David Cameron, his head similarly oversized, has to juggle various interest groups to make his way in the Houses of Parliament and says that the ordinary person's chances are slimmer than "Susan Boyle's chance of winning Britain's Got Talent."
No one knows who made the clip, which has been watched more than a million times since it went up a day or so ago.
House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., walks to a meeting with House Republicans on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013 in Washington. Senate leaders announced last-minute agreement Wednesday to avert a threatened Treasury default and reopen the government after a partial, 16-day shutdown. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., walks to a meeting with House Republicans on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013 in Washington. Senate leaders announced last-minute agreement Wednesday to avert a threatened Treasury default and reopen the government after a partial, 16-day shutdown. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., walk to a news conference after voting on a measure to avert a threatened Treasury default and reopen the government after a partial, 16-day shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013. The bill moves next to the Republican-controlled House. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional budget negotiators aren't guaranteeing success as they begin talks aimed at solving the nation's budget problems.
Republican and Democratic leaders of a joint House-Senate committee met for breakfast Thursday morning as they started talks.
The committee was formed as part of a deal to reopen the government and extend the government's ability to borrow money.
Both GOP Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state are promising to search for common ground.
But Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama is cautioning against raising expectations, and Democratic. Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland says just talking doesn't guarantee success. But Van Hollen notes that not talking guarantees failure.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — When a third-grade student who had been stung by a wasp developed welts on his neck and had trouble breathing, school nurse Amanda Williams had the necessary dose of epinephrine to counter the allergic reaction.
A law Tennessee enacted this year makes it easier for schools to stock the life-saving drug. Williams said the emergency room doctor told the boy's parents that he probably wouldn't have survived without the injection at Tellico Plains Elementary because it's a 30-minute drive to the nearest hospital.
"It would have been tragic," she said.
Fifteen other states enacted similar laws in 2013, joining 11 others that already had them, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. While only four of the states require schools to have the medication on hand, all the laws allow schools to stock it without a prescription for an individual person — a legal hurdle in many places — and provide legal protection for staff members who administer it.
The most common form of the medication is packaged inside a device called an auto injector. The tip of the device is placed firmly against the thigh, which releases a short, spring activated needle that injects the epinephrine.
Charlotte Collins is senior vice president of public policy and advocacy for the allergy foundation and has been keeping track of which states are enacting laws to encourage schools to stock the devices. She believes the trend was sparked by last year's death of a Virginia first-grader who had an allergic reaction on a playground after eating a nut. She went into cardiac arrest and died at a local hospital.
Medical experts have said the little girl, who had a peanut allergy, would probably be alive if her elementary school had been able to give her an epinephrine injection.
"Epinephrine is the first line treatment for these severe reactions," said Dr. Michael Pistiner, a pediatric allergist. "Studies show that delays in treatment with epinephrine increase risk of death."
Shortly after the girl's death, Virginia passed a law requiring all its schools to stock the medication.
Fifteen other states followed suit, mostly with legislation that allows schools to have the epinephrine. Bills are also pending in Ohio and Michigan.
So far Virginia, Maryland, Nebraska and Nevada are the only states to require it.
"I think that was just a major trigger in the public consciousness," Collins said of the girl's death, which made national news.
In July, the U.S. House passed legislation that would give states that come up with policies to make epinephrine available in schools special preference when they apply for asthma-related grants. The law could give states further incentive to pass such laws.
The bill was sponsored by Rep. Phil Roe, a Tennessee Republican and doctor, and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House's second-ranked Democrat. One requirement for a state to qualify for a preference is to make sure adequate legal protection is provided to personnel trained to administer the epinephrine.
"My granddaughter has a severe peanut allergy, and the presence of EpiPens in schools can be lifesaving," Hoyer said, referring to a brand of auto-injector.
Collins said she believes more states don't require that epinephrine be stocked in schools to avoid placing a burden on often cash-strapped school districts to purchase the drug. Still, it's an important step to simply allow schools to stock the medication without a prescription for an individual.
"Typical state laws can otherwise make it impossible for school districts that want to stock to avoid sanctions against dispensing prescription-only medications to an institution rather than a person," said Collins, adding that all the laws contain some form of legal protection for those administering the drug.
While the protections vary, the laws generally shield non-medical staff trained by a nurse to administer the epinephrine.
"A nurse can't be everywhere," said Sally Schoessler, director of nursing education for the National Association of School Nurses. "You need a very quick response when it comes to administering epinephrine for anaphylaxis."
Aside from bee stings, anaphylactic shock can be a reaction to such foods as peanuts, wheat, shellfish, milk or eggs. The epinephrine is particularly effective in stopping swelling in the throat or tongue that can be deadly, as well as preventing respiratory or cardiac failure.
According to the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, roughly 8 percent of children under age 18, or about 6 million, have at least one food allergy.
Tammy Edwards said those figures are why she and her son lobbied for the legislation in Tennessee. Her 12-year-old son Tyler, who carries an epinephrine auto-injector to school, attended legislative meetings with her and testified.
"It's hard for some people to understand that one little peanut ... could take a life," Edwards said.
About a quarter of anaphylaxis cases in schools occur among students who are not aware that they have an allergy.
Williams, the nurse, said that was the case with the boy who was stung by a wasp at her school in Monroe County, Tenn., which now allows epinephrine injectors to be placed in all 13 of its schools.
Sonia Hardin is the health supervisor for Monroe County schools, where nurses at each school have collectively trained more than 100 people to administer the epinephrine, as the state law allows.
She said having the medication available at schools in isolated rural areas, like where Tellico Plains Elementary is located, is important because she agrees time is valuable.
"It took the ambulance about 15 minutes to get there from the time we placed the 911 call," said Hardin, referring to the incident involving the third-grader. "We are just thankful ... we had that (epinephrine) and was able to use it."
___
Online:
Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America: http://www.aafa.org/
Contact: Andrew Carleen acarleen@mit.edu 617-253-1682 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Simple urine test developed by MIT engineers uses nanotechnology to detect dangerous blood clotting
CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Life-threatening blood clots can form in anyone who sits on a plane for a long time, is confined to bed while recovering from surgery, or takes certain medications.
There is no fast and easy way to diagnose these clots, which often remain undetected until they break free and cause a stroke or heart attack. However, new technology from MIT may soon change that: A team of engineers has developed a way to detect blood clots using a simple urine test.
The noninvasive diagnostic, described in a recent issue of the journal ACS Nano, relies on nanoparticles that detect the presence of thrombin, a key blood-clotting factor.
Such a system could be used to monitor patients who are at high risk for blood clots, says Sangeeta Bhatia, senior author of the paper and the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Biochemistry.
"Some patients are at more risk for clotting, but existing blood tests are not consistently able to detect the formation of new clots," says Bhatia, who is also a senior associate member of the Broad Institute and a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES).
Lead authors of the paper are Kevin Lin, a graduate student in chemical engineering, and Gabriel Kwong, a postdoc in IMES. Other authors are Andrew Warren, a graduate student in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), and former HST postdoc David Wood.
Sensing thrombin
Blood clotting is produced by a complex cascade of protein interactions, culminating in the formation of fibrin, a fibrous protein that seals wounds. The last step of this process the conversion of fibrinogen to fibrin is controlled by an enzyme called thrombin.
Current tests for blood clotting are very indirect, Bhatia says. One, known as the D-dimer test, looks for the presence of fibrin byproducts, which indicates that a clot is being broken down, but will not detect its initial formation.
Bhatia and her colleagues developed their new test based on a technology they first reported last year for early detection of colorectal cancer. "We realized the same exact technology would work for blood clots," she says. "So we took the test we had developed before, which is an injectable nanoparticle, and made it a thrombin sensor."
The system consists of iron oxide nanoparticles, which the Food and Drug Administration has approved for human use, coated with peptides (short proteins) that are specialized to interact with thrombin. After being injected into mice, the nanoparticles travel throughout the body. When the particles encounter thrombin, the thrombin cleaves the peptides at a specific location, releasing fragments that are then excreted in the animals' urine.
Once the urine is collected, the protein fragments can be identified by treating the sample with antibodies specific to peptide tags included in the fragments. The researchers showed that the amount of these tags found in the urine is directly proportional to the level of blood clotting in the mice's lungs.
In the previous version of the system, reported last December in Nature Biotechnology, the researchers used mass spectrometry to distinguish the fragments by their mass. However, testing samples with antibodies is much simpler and cheaper, the researchers say.
Rapid screening
Bhatia says she envisions two possible applications for this kind of test. One is to screen patients who come to the emergency room complaining of symptoms that might indicate a blood clot, allowing doctors to rapidly triage such patients and determine if more tests are needed.
"Right now they just don't know how to efficiently define who to do the more extensive workup on. It's one of those things that you can't afford to miss, so patients can get an unnecessarily expensive workup," Bhatia says.
Another application is monitoring patients who are at high risk for a clot for example, people who have to spend a lot of time in bed recovering from surgery. Bhatia is working on a urine dipstick test, similar to a pregnancy test, that doctors could give patients when they go home after surgery.
"If a patient is at risk for thrombosis, you could send them home with a 10-pack of these sticks and say, 'Pee on this every other day and call me if it turns blue,'" she says.
Bhatia plans to launch a company to commercialize the technology, with funding from MIT's Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. Other applications for the nanoparticle system could include monitoring and diagnosing cancer. It could also be adapted to track liver, pulmonary, and kidney fibrosis, Bhatia says.
###
The research was funded by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Fund, the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund, the Mazumdar-Shaw International Oncology Fellows Program, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and the Deshpande Center.
Written by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Finding blood clots before they wreak havoc
Public release date: 16-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Andrew Carleen acarleen@mit.edu 617-253-1682 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Simple urine test developed by MIT engineers uses nanotechnology to detect dangerous blood clotting
CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Life-threatening blood clots can form in anyone who sits on a plane for a long time, is confined to bed while recovering from surgery, or takes certain medications.
There is no fast and easy way to diagnose these clots, which often remain undetected until they break free and cause a stroke or heart attack. However, new technology from MIT may soon change that: A team of engineers has developed a way to detect blood clots using a simple urine test.
The noninvasive diagnostic, described in a recent issue of the journal ACS Nano, relies on nanoparticles that detect the presence of thrombin, a key blood-clotting factor.
Such a system could be used to monitor patients who are at high risk for blood clots, says Sangeeta Bhatia, senior author of the paper and the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Biochemistry.
"Some patients are at more risk for clotting, but existing blood tests are not consistently able to detect the formation of new clots," says Bhatia, who is also a senior associate member of the Broad Institute and a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES).
Lead authors of the paper are Kevin Lin, a graduate student in chemical engineering, and Gabriel Kwong, a postdoc in IMES. Other authors are Andrew Warren, a graduate student in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), and former HST postdoc David Wood.
Sensing thrombin
Blood clotting is produced by a complex cascade of protein interactions, culminating in the formation of fibrin, a fibrous protein that seals wounds. The last step of this process the conversion of fibrinogen to fibrin is controlled by an enzyme called thrombin.
Current tests for blood clotting are very indirect, Bhatia says. One, known as the D-dimer test, looks for the presence of fibrin byproducts, which indicates that a clot is being broken down, but will not detect its initial formation.
Bhatia and her colleagues developed their new test based on a technology they first reported last year for early detection of colorectal cancer. "We realized the same exact technology would work for blood clots," she says. "So we took the test we had developed before, which is an injectable nanoparticle, and made it a thrombin sensor."
The system consists of iron oxide nanoparticles, which the Food and Drug Administration has approved for human use, coated with peptides (short proteins) that are specialized to interact with thrombin. After being injected into mice, the nanoparticles travel throughout the body. When the particles encounter thrombin, the thrombin cleaves the peptides at a specific location, releasing fragments that are then excreted in the animals' urine.
Once the urine is collected, the protein fragments can be identified by treating the sample with antibodies specific to peptide tags included in the fragments. The researchers showed that the amount of these tags found in the urine is directly proportional to the level of blood clotting in the mice's lungs.
In the previous version of the system, reported last December in Nature Biotechnology, the researchers used mass spectrometry to distinguish the fragments by their mass. However, testing samples with antibodies is much simpler and cheaper, the researchers say.
Rapid screening
Bhatia says she envisions two possible applications for this kind of test. One is to screen patients who come to the emergency room complaining of symptoms that might indicate a blood clot, allowing doctors to rapidly triage such patients and determine if more tests are needed.
"Right now they just don't know how to efficiently define who to do the more extensive workup on. It's one of those things that you can't afford to miss, so patients can get an unnecessarily expensive workup," Bhatia says.
Another application is monitoring patients who are at high risk for a clot for example, people who have to spend a lot of time in bed recovering from surgery. Bhatia is working on a urine dipstick test, similar to a pregnancy test, that doctors could give patients when they go home after surgery.
"If a patient is at risk for thrombosis, you could send them home with a 10-pack of these sticks and say, 'Pee on this every other day and call me if it turns blue,'" she says.
Bhatia plans to launch a company to commercialize the technology, with funding from MIT's Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. Other applications for the nanoparticle system could include monitoring and diagnosing cancer. It could also be adapted to track liver, pulmonary, and kidney fibrosis, Bhatia says.
###
The research was funded by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Fund, the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund, the Mazumdar-Shaw International Oncology Fellows Program, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and the Deshpande Center.
Written by Anne Trafton, MIT News Office
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The iPhone 5S is outselling the iPhone 5C at a ratio of 2.5-to-1, according to one analyst, and that pace should continue through the rest of the year.
Apple's iPhone 5S is significantly outpacing the iPhone 5C in sales, and at least one analyst believes that trend will continue into the holiday season.
The iPhone 5S is outselling the iPhone 5C at a ratio of 2.5-to-1, Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley wrote in a note to investors on Wednesday. That news is obviously good for Apple, which generates more revenue on the iPhone 5S than iPhone 5C, but it also cements Walkley's belief that Apple will sell 52.5 million iPhones during the last quarter of the year.
The first quarter of 2014 should also be bolstered by China Mobile, Walkley said. The crown jewel in Apple's wireless plans should finally start shipping the iPhone early next year to its more than 750 million subscribers, which could add over 10 million iPhone unit sales to Apple's financials, Walkley said.
The iPad 5 could also be a winner for Apple through the rest of the year. Walkley believes Apple will announce a major iPad 5 redesign at its special event on October 22 that will spur increased sales. Walkley is also unsure when the iPad Mini with Retina display might hit store shelves, further complicating sales forecasts on that device. Therefore, in the short-term, Apple could expect the iPad 5 to drive its tablet sales.
"We are modeling iPad 5 and iPad Mini units at 12.9M/11.5M for the December quarter," Walkley wrote to investors. "We anticipate this sales mix will reverse to 8.4M/14.4M in the March quarter driven by the delayed launch of a refreshed iPad Mini with Retina display and increased iPad Mini demand from international markets, particularly in China around Chinese New Year."
One other tidbit from the Walkley report: he expects Apple to launch its long-awaited smartwatch and television at some point in its 2015 fiscal year, which starts in October of 2014.
Walkley has reiterated his "buy" recommendation on Apple shares and has upped his 12-month price target to $580.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/kXBjvayCDjU/story01.htm
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